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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

Trying to put something into perspective

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Oct 13, 2010
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I've heard a bunch of times that a shorter wavelength is a little better for burning than longer wavelengths. I'm a laser noob, so I want to see if I have this right. I'm going to use, well, I can't think of the word right now, but i'm thinking it's a metaphor:

The shorline of a beach would be an object, and the water would be a laser. The less time between waves(the shorter the wavelength) that crash into the beach, the faster the shorline(object) is eroded(burned).

Is that about right?
 





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Maybe you shouldn't try then if it all tastes bad to you, have you ever tried non alcohol beers ? I have had a couple good ones.
 
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Joined
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Maybe you shouldn't try then if it all tastes bad to you, have you ever tried non alcohol beers ? I have had a couple good ones.

Not yet. I don't like the beer flavor any more than the alcohol flavor. If they had liquers without alcohol, i'd drink them, but i'd essentially be paying more to drink something I could get cheap at McDonald's or something.
 
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Beer is really disgusting. Alcohol in general tastes bad for some reason. I can't find one that I like.

To continue the beach analogy, I'm in the same boat. I've tried all kinds of alcoholic drinks and they all taste the same. Nasty, like stagnant water out of a decaying log.

As a result, I'm a non drinker.

As for your question, I have no clue. :beer:

-Bob
 
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To get back on topic... your analogy is just about right, except you've got it the other way around - while the wavelength is shorter, they have higher energy, and thus there are fewer photons hitting an object. So, imagine each wave is a photon. So with a red laser, you have a bunch of waves crashing into the shore but they are short and not very powerful. Then imagine for 405nm, you have relatively few tidal waves coming and hitting the shore. You'll notice that the tidal waves, even though there are fewer of them, erode the shore faster. This is because the tidal waves carry more energy per wave.
 
Joined
Oct 13, 2010
Messages
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To get back on topic... your analogy is just about right, except you've got it the other way around - while the wavelength is shorter, they have higher energy, and thus there are fewer photons hitting an object. So, imagine each wave is a photon. So with a red laser, you have a bunch of waves crashing into the shore but they are short and not very powerful. Then imagine for 405nm, you have relatively few tidal waves coming and hitting the shore. You'll notice that the tidal waves, even though there are fewer of them, erode the shore faster. This is because the tidal waves carry more energy per wave.

Looks I did have it backwards. Well, I know now at least.
 
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Beer with no alcohol!? No point IMO! It's a taste you have to "acquire."

Instead of using analogies, we can use physics.

The ability of light to act on matter is not dependent just on how many waves crash into a shoreline per unit of time - which is more like frequency than wavelength. Wavelength is the distance between periods of a wave. How much work light can do on an object is dependent on how much energy the "waves" are carrying.

Light has an interesting tendency to behave as a wave or a particle depending on how you look at it. Quantum mechanics says that energy is quantized, or that energy comes in "pieces." Light has been experimentally determined to be quantized - it comes in "particles." Because we can treat light as a wave or a particle, we can say that each "piece" of light contains a definite quantity of energy that is dependent of a few of its characteristics.

Physicists have determined that the energy of a photon is related to it's frequency (v) (which is the speed of light divided by wavelength) and Planck's constant (h) in the relationship:

E=hv or E=hc/λ where c is the speed of light and λ is wavelength

Planck's constant is 6.626 x 10^-34 Joule seconds
If, for c, we use units of meters per second and for λ we use units of meters, the units of seconds and meters will "cancel" in the equation and we will be left with Joules, a unit of energy.

If you do a simple calculator exercise, you will see that an individual photon carries a small amount of energy but by calculating E for different wavelengths, you will find that shorter wavelength photons carry more energy than longer wavelength photons.

By no means is this a comprehensive explanation but I think it is more useful than analogies.
 
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Have you tried Sam Adams? Then there are Crown Royal, peppermint schnapps, etc. Then there is wine
cooler and daqeri, etc which taste more like kool-aid than alcohol. Prettymuch anything in plastic is
going to taste like garbage. That doesn't include the soft flexible plastic, though that is usually okay.

But back on topic, I'll use a wave analogy to explain a wave phenomenon. Think of a plate of water on
top of a speaker. At low frequencies, the water just sloshes around and doesn't do too much. At the
same volume level (amplitude), and a higher frequency, the waves start hitting each other and splashing
around. When the frequency is high enough, the water will actually begin to "boil" and turn to "steam"
such as in an ultrasonic vaporizer.
 




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